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do you want to know if i was scared? i was. it wouldn’t be right of me to say that though, that the hardest thing i’ve ever done was die. that’d be a poor fuckin’ thing to say to the guy i killed. it shouldn’t be easy to kill someone.
hovering my hands over the buttons i thought to myself, how in the fuck did harumaki manage this? every day for years, she shouldered this? i killed one guy and i felt like i couldn’t go to space anymore. heroes don’t kill. it’s in their code. how the fuck had ouma conned me into letting him die the martyr with his heroic plan and turn me into the villain?
…is that a real question you want an answer to?
probably, so it all meant something.
i tore all my hair out in that exisal thinkin’ about what i could have done. could’ve… knocked ouma out, forced the antidote onto him. could’ve killed myself after, so my blood wouldn’t’na been on anybody’s hands. the shit that i could’ve done had i only known where this would lead… my only distraction from alla that was this damn ass book.
seriously, how far in advance had ouma planned this whole thing? sure the whole… harumaki runnin’ in with a crossbow was unexpected, but he fully intended on going full bastard and making me do this.
…
but you know, i can’t be as angry at him as i want to be. the extent of my anger is knowing that all along we’d wanted the same thing. if only he’d been more forthright- there was no need to sacrifice people, to manipulate people, to do all of this to save everyone.
fuck, do i actually believe that’s what he was trying to do? i want to believe in people but all that guy’s ever given me to believe in is his ability to piss people off, and lie, and never face himself.
…and i’m no better, am i?
really, dyin’s the best thing i could’ve done, for anyone. i accomplished the most good this way, i think.
i didn’t want anyone to die, not even ouma if you can believe that much, but someone had to die. no matter which options i took, someone was going down. he engineered a situation where best case scenario meant i worked with him. even after he died, there’d be no fuckin’ point to any of it if i wanted to defect, if i wanted to change. there’d be no dice. working with him meant that maybe, our lives could be spent on something.
bastard, making me think of gonta and iruma. if i didn’t work with him, then all his machinations up to this point would’ve been for nothing. i wanted to believe that their deaths could have been for something, not for naught. but it’s fine now.
…eh? do i hate him? course i do, the guy’s more fucked in the head than anyone i’ve ever met.
…
in a way, i don’t though. don’t get me wrong, he put us all through a lot of trouble, but… he only ever wanted the same shit we did- to live. it’s more to the point to say i hate the way he went about all this.
he laid down his life to stop this game. he’d drawn up these plans far before harumaki forced his hand. he was planning to die for this.
at the very least, i can respect him now.
y’know that damn book he wrote me? i spent hours flipping through it, page after page. little notes in the margins like a fuckin’ goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure novel told me where to go during certain situations. he’d written up so many lines, i didn’t know what to say except… he’s kinda scary smart. i followed it pretty much to a T!
well, except for some of the lines he wanted me to say to shuichi.
sorry ‘bout that. you understand, right?
…you wouldn’t have wanted me to say any of those things, anyways. not that i think i deserve him more than you. he wouldn’t’na been in the mood to hear any of it. he wanted so badly to believe you were dead instead of me. sorry that it had to be like that.
huh?
…yeah i know he won’t hear any of that. sorry if that bothered you, me carryin’ on like that.
any other questions?
…
i have way too many people i’d wanna talk to again. i don’t have the right message in mind for everyone. i don’t know what everyone needs right now.
…me?
i guess if i’m dead, i can say so, yeah? you’re not real anyways.
…
i always wanted a family, y’know? a pretty wife, a picket fence, a dog named cosmo and a spacesuit. wanted to find extraterrestrials but also like… maybe it’s embarrassing to admit i wanted the average guy shit too. n-no one ever asked me what i wanted to do after reaching space! i can be a tender guy sometimes!
a pretty wife or, a pretty husband, maybe. i always thought i’d settle down with a girl. not cause i’m like… not into dudes. there’s some gorgeous dudes out there. i just thought it’d be easier to find a girl i liked. easier to have kids if we don’t have to adopt. it was a comfortable thought.
i’m dead now. i think i would’ve married shuichi. he seems the type who’d strap in for a wild ride with me and settle down when we got where we wanted. maybe it could’ve worked.
…though, i know. it couldn’t be like this. like we’d been- built on lies. my lies.
you want to know what i wanted? to see my grandparents again. they would’ve wanted grandkids too, from their grandson who showed everyone that you didn’t need the approval of no deadbeat dad to get into a good school, get to the stars, and be somebody. they would’ve wanted some little ones, to keep ‘em company. baa-chan really got lonely whenever i’d run off on my little adventures for too long. you know how old folks are.
i wanted to let them know i’m grateful. they raised me when no one else gave a shit about what happened to me. and they didn’t have to. they chose to. they chose to love me. i wanted to pay ‘em back for all of it.
i didn’t wanna die. i was scared to die. i bit my hands up in a fuckin’ panic waiting in that exisal. do you think any of that was easy to do? i’m so glad i could make it look easy- make falling asleep in a big metal bullet careening into the atmosphere look easy.
that was the easy part. getting out of the exisal to face everyone, throwing that smile on and hoping my liars mug could get me through to my death?
i respect ouma because he’d done this song and dance every day.
reading over his lines again, and again, adjusting my voice inflection as i spoke into the voice receiver, startled at the way it warped my voice- it was so much easier to become him than to be me. and when it came time to step out, i realized that fear that ouma felt every day of his life.
the fear of people seeing you for who you are.
i don’t have all the answers and i don’t think i’m a hero. parts of this shit yielded results but over all, what had i done? been a mighty fine cheerleader and a captive princess in an exisal hangar.
and lied.
lied about who i was, where i came from, the shit i did, why i did it, even my accomplishments. and all this to the people who trusted me more than anybody else.
sorry shuichi, i lied. sorry harumaki, i lied.
you’re not fuckin’ sorry.
you’re sorry you got caught lying. had you gotten away with it, would you have felt any guilt? lying about your illness or about anything else? you’re sorry you made people feel bad. you’re sorry that you let people down but that won’t trump the fact that you can’t let people see that you’re vulnerable and hollow inside.
you knew that you were dying and for days, you put your feelings on the back burner because you were a coward- a coward like you’d always called harumaki.
that’s true.
…
sorry. i’ve gotten more… in my head about this kinda shit.
what i wanted was…
one day baa-chan told me the story of the first time i’d really threw up. not like when you’re a baby and you just kinda gargle on every damn thing and spit it everywhere. i’m talking the first time i ever blew chunks all over the living room. she said i’d woken up from out of a sound sleep in a stupor. this was years ago, i was tiny. i can barely recall this. she says that i walked out into the living room and looked her dead in the eyes before lookin’ at the floor and spewing everywhere.
i started cryin’. i said i didn’t know who did it. i didn’t know what it was and i didn’t know how it got there.
she laughed, tried to tell me that i wasn’t in trouble and she was going to clean me up but i wouldn’t listen. was insistin’ that i didnt need any help but she took me into the bathroom and cleaned me all up. i was just bawling the whole time apparently, but what i remember from her story is that she let me lay in her bed.
i’d asked, baa-chan aren’t you afraid i’m going to get sick again?
…she didn’t care one bit.
jii-chan didn’t like me sniffling and sobbing all the time, so i hushed up about it.
…i wanted that feeling.
i can’t word it any better than that. just… the feeling you get when you’re with family. when someone isn’t embarrassed by you and doesn’t care that you’re…
vulnerable.
yeah, i think that’s what i wanted.
i think if i had told shuichi about my sickness, we could’ve found some ways to work through it. i had to stop sleeping over when my coughing at night got real bad. i couldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and get blood all over his bed. i couldn’t worry him. not ever. a man doesn’t create burdens for anybody. i think though, if i could have a do-over i might…
d-does this satisfy you?
i wanted to live. i was scared to die. i lied and i regret it. i loved and i lost it.
i’d do it all over if i fuckin’ could. i would open up if i could. i would tell shuichi if i could.
fuck sake, if i woke up tomorrow inside of one of those goddamned lockers again and had to go through this all again, you’ve no idea the things i would do.
…does it help you at all?
i couldn’t open up to even… the guy i really loved. that wasn’t fair of me at all. we shared a bed some nights, and i couldn’t even let him help me. always focusing on what he wanted and what he needed… i never left any room for myself.
haha, maybe that’s why i feel this way.
it’s not all bad though. i got to see space and i got to get away with murder!
…sorry, not exactly something that was on my bucket list. and that wasn’t a funny joke.
still, wasn’t it cool how i died at the right second to avoid execution? i planned that perfectly. monokuma never saw it coming!
…eheheh, sorry. sometimes i think i sound more and more like him every day i'm deader.